Computer systems including personal computers, workstations, hand held devices, etc. have been utilized in an increasing number of applications at home, the workplace, educational environments, entertainment environments, etc. Peripheral devices of increased capabilities and performance have been developed and continually improved upon to extend the functionality and applications of computer systems. For example, imaging devices, such as printers, have experienced significant advancements including refined imaging, faster processing, and color reproduction.
Some imaging device configurations have become more sophisticated as the capabilities and performance increase. These devices may utilize programming, such as firmware, to implement various imaging operations including determining imaging device status and navigating imaging file systems. In one exemplary approach, status of an image device (e.g., printer) is determined by issuing file system commands written using Hewlett-Packard's Printer Job Language (PJL) to manipulate a file system of the printer. However, manipulation of the file system using PJL lacked user friendliness and involved difficulties in displaying results produced by user commands issued to the image device. Furthermore, prior systems lacked sharing the file system of the image device with other users of the image device.
Aspects described herein provide improved hard imaging devices, hard-imaging systems, hard imaging device file system accessing methods, and hard imaging device file system sharing methods.